As the days get warmer, passersby more frequently witness exchanges of money for drugs near 16th and Cleveland streets in Denver, and in a nearby parking lot. Equally disturbing is the increase in the number of times someone is spotted boldly lighting up a marijuana cigarette or pipe in Civic Center or along the 16th Street Mall.

If the people who work downtown are rightly alarmed or offended, what kind of message are we sending tourists?

— Barbara Ellis is news editor of the Editorial Page at The Denver Post.

The 2014 midterm election season is well underway. Actually, it has been since late 2013, when both parties started signaling that they were pretty much done with any serious legislating on immigration, trade or other challenges facing the republic. Never mind that a new class of lawmakers had just arrived in Washington in January 2013. Nope, it was time to start thinking about the midterms.

Holding nationwide elections for federal office every two years feeds the permanent-campaign mind-set that grips our elected officials and political reporters.

The two-year term requires new House members to start their fundraising for the next election as soon as they arrive in Washington. This winnows the pool of candidates — and not in a good way.

Yes, the founders believed that frequent elections would give House members, as James Madison put it, “immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.” But there’s not much responsiveness to the public when more than 90 percent of House incumbents win their races.

So, onward with a constitutional amendment to expand House terms to four years. Voters would still be able to express midterm sentiments in elections for Senate and governors’ offices. Meanwhile, Washington could get back to work.

— Alec MacGillis is a senior editor at the New Republic.

ONLINE PERSONALITY TESTS

Facebook posts increasingly feature tests to figure out which Beatle you are, which president you are most like or what character of “All in the Family” you would be. Go ahead and fill these out, but for God’s sake don’t tell us. Does anyone really care whether you are more like “LA Law” than “Hill Street Blues”? What does that even mean anyway, other than you have too much time on your hands?

— Jeremy Meyer is an editorial writer at The Denver Post.

AP CLASSES

To hear the College Board tell it, advanced placement classes can do it all: Prepare teens to succeed in college! Expose poor and minority students to more rigorous material! Reduce the cost of college by allowing students to graduate earlier!

The educational and emotional toll these classes take would be too high even if the AP program delivered on all its promises. But it doesn’t. Students take nearly 4 million AP tests each year, and more than 40 percent fail. Passing rates are even lower for Latino and African-American students.

Over the past five years, I’ve interviewed hundreds of educators and students across the country. More often than not, they tell me that the demands of AP classes leave them rushing through material without fully absorbing it. The pressure to succeed contributes to soaring rates of teen anxiety and depression.

The exams don’t bolster college performance, either. A 2006 study of 18,000 college students in introductory science courses found that having taken AP science classes did not significantly boost their grades.

College admissions officials should reduce or eliminate their reliance on AP coursework, quantitative rankings and padded high school “résumés.”

— Vicki Abeles, an attorney and advocate for children and families, produced the documentary film, “Race to Nowhere.”

POLITI-TWEETS

The #coleg and #copolitics Twitter feeds need to be swept clean of paid political operatives — from both the right and left — who use these hashtags to conduct warfare against the opposition. Lost in the noise created by political cage-fighting is any thoughtful policy debate and real news. Perhaps they should create their own feed. We have a suggestion: #copropaganda.

— Alicia Caldwell is an editorial writer at The Denver Post.

THE AIR FORCE

In 1947, with the Red Army occupying much of Europe, the United States tasked its Air Force with planning for the atomic destruction of the Soviet Union’s cities and industrial heartland. This was the first mission for the newly independent Air Force, after a 30-year campaign by aviators to separate from the Army. The Air Force was expected to essentially win wars by airpower alone.

Except it’s tough to win wars from the air. So now we have several air forces — in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — because none of the other services trust the Air Force to meet its needs. America needs military aviation, but it doesn’t need a bureaucracy specifically devoted to airpower.

— Robert M. Farley is the author of “Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force.”

BRICs

People blame Goldman Sachs for many things. I blame the investment bank mainly for popularizing the acronym BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — in a 2001 report by economist Jim O’Neill arguing that long-term growth in these emerging markets would surpass that of the world’s richer nations.

Investing in the BRICs sounded like a good idea when these countries were growing quickly and when the most-developed economies were sputtering. But the grouping quickly outlived its usefulness. It has become clear that, other than large territories and populations, the BRICs have little in common. The main trait these countries share is that their economies are as volatile as their politics. According to all indicators, the best acronym to invest in is still USA.

— Moisés Naím is the chief international affairs columnist for El País and the author of “The End of Power.”

MARRIAGE ANACHRONISMS

Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage agree on one thing: that it means something to get married. How do you reconcile that with the fact that in Colorado any two adult heterosexuals (who aren’t actually married to someone else) can just declare themselves married and for all intents they are?

Let any two consenting adults (same or opposite sex) who want to get married do so, with all the legal rights and responsibilities. Let other couples who aren’t ready or able to take that step negotiate the details of their less-formal arrangements. But it’s long past time for Colorado to get rid of this anachronism.

Either you’re married or you aren’t.

— Michael D. Whalen of Denver is a Denver Post reader

MISOGYNY

The empowerment of girls and women around the world will create a positive catalyst for change and tremendous growth for our global economy. Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours and produce half the world’s food. In return, they take home one-tenth of the world’s income and own just 1 percent of the world’s property, according to CARE.

Investments in education, maternal health, ending child marriage and preventing domestic violence will flourish when we eradicate misogyny wherever it tries to root — whether it’s online, at home, or in the workplace. In the U.S., entire families will benefit when both women and men have equal pay, paid maternity and paternity leave, access to affordable child care, and workplace flexibility.

— Lisa Wirthman is a freelance writer in Highlands Ranch who writes regularly for The Post. Follow her on Twitter: @lisawirthman

ON THE ROAD

Roundabouts on interstate highways (i.e., Pecos and Interstate 70); street-facing garages; streets without sidewalks; and valet parking in the public right-of-way.

— Susan Barnes-Gelt is a civic activist and Denver Post columnist.

SELFIES

Please, dear God, rid the world of “selfies,” whether posted by millennial hipsters or aging hippies. And no more twerking.

— Teresa Keegan of Denver writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.

THE POST-APOCALYPSE

Hollywood has always loved a disaster story. Lately, our heroes aren’t saving the world by drilling to the center of the Earth or engaging in robotic boxing matches with monsters from another universe. Instead, the world goes to hell by means of alien invasion, totalitarian government or radical income inequality.

The remedies for these post-apocalypses are often similar. They feature plucky teenage girls, such as archer Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” books and films; Tris Prior from Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” franchise; and Melanie, who acquires an alien parasite in “The Host,” the other hit from “Twilight” scribe Stephenie Meyer.

But post-apocalypse stories get repetitive awfully fast. Instead of letting young women come to the forefront once the world has gone to pieces, a real test for Hollywood would be to see if it can make a hit out of a story in which a young woman staves off disaster.

Presidents’ Day is more than a little bizarre. Why would a country founded on the rejection of monarchy devote a day to the celebration of the office of the presidency and those who have occupied it?

Getting rid of Presidents’ Day would not be difficult. All we would have to do is designate the third Monday of February to mark George Washington’s Birthday. The father of our country is worth a holiday, not least because he adopted the title “Mr. President” rather than “Your Majesty” or some other exalted term. Presidents’ Day undercuts that republican modesty.

And making the shift would have one other advantage: eliminating a perennial punctuation problem. Where does that apostrophe go?

— Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor for National Review, is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

STATUS UPDATES

What is your status? Please do share. Make sure to inform us of what you are eating or reading or doing at this very moment. Convince us you are happy and fulfilled. Otherwise, how would we know?

I’m not the first person to decry how publicly self-involved we have become. And I’m certainly no less addicted to my smartphone than the average American multitasker, as my wife will attest. But there is a fine line between relying on social media for information and communication — and using it to broadcast your every experience.

Have I interrupted a date with my wife to keep up with the latest happenings in Ukraine? Yes. Have I done so to Instagram my salad because (OMG!) it has currants in it? Never.

Does that make me a social-media elitist? Probably.

But I am concerned about the way our obsession with the status update has transformed reality into something else entirely. When we regularly step out of the present in order to record it, filter it and then share it with people we do not care enough about to actually be around, we are removing ourselves from the moments we’re documenting. Our filtered lives are subsuming our real ones.

So by all means enjoy that salad. But stop documenting it. No one needs a press conference about your appetizer. You are not news.

— Reza Aslan’s most recent book is “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” Follow him on Twitter: @rezaaslan.

REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION DISTRICT

A transit district that can promise a town (Longmont) a light-rail train, get it to pass an extra tax, then admit said town is never getting a train, needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. Maybe CDOT needs to be in that category as well.

— Susan Clotfelter is editor of the Saturday Home section and Grow

LOW-FAT PRODUCTS

With swimsuit season around the corner, May becomes the cruelest month, but it need not be. To ease your spring-slimming efforts, all you need to do is take one counterintuitive step: Purge the pantry of low-fat foods.

Yes, low-fat products make people fat. To replace the texture lost when fat is removed, food manufacturers use “fat replacers,” which are usually composed of carbohydrates — often just sugar.

We’ve been told for decades that eating fat makes us fat — and gives us heart disease — but the real culprits are carbohydrates. Today we consume more calories than we did in the early 1970s, although a smaller proportion of them come from fat. We are also eating at least 25 percent more carbohydrates — and we are fatter than ever.

Over the past decade, many clinical trials have established that a higher-fat diet is more effective than a low-fat one in fighting obesity and heart disease. Toast that with some cream in your coffee! It’s far more delicious and filling than nonfat milk — and it has much less sugar.

At the risk of being controversial (oh, what the hell), I’d love to rid the world of religion — all religion — and any irrational, inexplicable, unprovable, unwarranted beliefs in shamanism, invisible sky friends, totems, superstitions and that voodoo that you (we) do so well. What’s wrong with saying “I just don’t know” and leaving the mysteries of life and death as just mysteries that may be solved in future times?

— Steve Lipsher of Silverthorne writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.

CELEBRITY STYLISTS

The entertainment business is brutal. So who can blame an actress for employing a stylist for every big event? I get it: I experienced red-carpet hoopla and the accompanying anxiety while at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of “Fair Game.”

Here’s a radical proposal: Ban the celebrity stylists, even for one high-profile event, and let’s see how the stars dress themselves, without professional help. Let them stand in front of their closets like the rest of us and figure out which shoes go best with which dress. And no borrowing of designer clothes or expensive jewels, which often come with their own bodyguard. Not for the people wearing them — for the jewels.

We treat celebrities as our royalty. If they had to dress themselves, maybe we would see them a bit more as the human beings they really are.

A world without stylists might not be as tasteful, but it would definitely be more fun and realistic.

— Valerie Plame Wilson is the author of “Blowback” and “Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government.”